(It took me 4 days to write this post during my 10min breaks when I was at university. I don't expect you to read it in one go, but if you do so (even in 10 steps!), I'll be very thankful to you all, because I spent much time on it!)
During the past couple of weeks, I got busier than anytime of my graduate study here, although I was also busy enough before that. The story began when our beloved adviser told us during a group meeting: "I'm really glad of having such hard-working students on this project, and being proud of you, I'm sure that we'll have our micro-pump in our hands pretty soon... But, you're now 4 students on this project, and it's very critical for us to have the first sample of our device ready for testing much sooner than our deadline (i.e. in October), let's say by July 15th, when we have the DARPA PI meeting... So, I recommend you to divide 24 hours by 4, and schedule in a way that this project will be run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without interruption!... Work in series, not parallel, so each of you does fabrication 6-8 hours a day, and you can spend the remaining time you're at university on characterizing the device in the lab or on studying..."
And we started doing so! Seriously! With no interruption, and 24/7! Until we blocked on Tuesday by an unknown issue in some part of process, so we could do nothing for 24hours. It was 3:30pm that I finished microscopy of the device and our next tool reservation was on Wednesday 4:00pm, so we had 24.5 hours for ourselves...
I went home, knowing nothing to do! Although I had so many plans like playing piano without any stress, cleaning, shopping, cooking after almost a month, etc., and I really started some of those, but I was still feeling strange, asking myself what I should exactly do! Because it wasn't usual time of getting home (I usually got home around midnight during these two weeks)... Even I couldn't get to sleep... I was lacking something! But what?!... Fabrication?!... Cleanroom?!... And then I started remembering a story:
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Once when I was 8 years old, I was given a book written by a German writer (I don't remember writer's exact name: Schneider?! Muller?! or something like that...) and named (in Farsi) "A bear who intended to remain a bear" (It seems that the original German name was something else, because recently I searched the name on the web, but I couldn't find anything). The book was a thin one, seemed to be written for children, with so many illustrations and pictures (almost each page was completely covered with a large picture), but it wasn't a children book at all (I really don't know why it's classified so in Iran). It was one of the saddest and most depressing books I'd ever seen in my life, with very unhappy realistic pictures, all of autumn and painted in cold colors... It was telling a very Kafkaesque story of an excessively industrialized society...
The story was about a bear living in a jungle who went to a cave for his annual hibernation as he'd done so all other years. But this time, during the winter, a company came and cut the trees on the part of jungle the bear's cave was located to build a very large factory there. So, when spring came, the cave was located under a factory, and as soon as the bear came out of his hibernation, he found himself in a factory! While he was shocked of this almost sudden change, a watchman supposed him as a factory worker and shouted at him to get back to work! Of course the bear (he COULD speak in the story) replied -very politely- "As you can see sir, I'm a bear!", but he replied: "What I can see at front of my eyes is just a lazy worker, who should wash and shave ASAP!" The bear was, however, insistent enough to prove he's not a worker, but a bear; so they went to the head worker, but the response was the same: "A lazy worker who needs shaving and washing!"... They brought the bear from person to person to convince him that he's not a bear, and each time they went to someone with a higher rank in factory than the previous ones; but the response was always the same: "A lazy worker who needs shaving and washing!"... (This totally reminds me of Kafka's "The Trial"...)
They did so, until they ended up to the head boss of the factory. Since (as the writer joked here) he was the one with largest room and less things to do in the whole factory, he had enough time to give to the bear for proving his claim, but the boss also believed that he is a worker because bears are all either in zoos or circuses! So they brought the bear to a circus and then to a zoo, showing him to other bears. Circus bears said that of course he just looked like a bear but he's not, since he cannot dance, nor can he perform any kind of circus show as a REAL(!) bear! What bears at zoo said was nothing so different: "A REAL bear should live in a cage in zoo, not in a factory! So he's just a lazy worker with a bear-like fur coat, who needs shaving and washing!..."
Finally the bear got contented to be a worker, although he knew that he's not. They brought him back to the factory, while he's whispering to himself: "But I'm a bear... What's wrong with people here?!"... Then they brought cloths, identification card and shaving stuff for him. He washed, shaved, dressed like other workers and even swept his card to get to work without any objection, and started working as they taught him. Days came by day and he spent all the spring and summer at work, without saying a word about being a bear, until the time of his hibernation got closed, but he'd forgotten what he should do. Just getting more and more tired, this time he just asked himself: "What's wrong with me?!"...
As the winter was getting closer he got lazier and usually got asleep during work, until they fired him from the factory. However, he didn't know where he can go and what he should do, because he was just trained to be a factory worker. He walked along a highway in snowy weather for long, until he got to a motel, and asked for a room. The motel reception told him: "We don't let factory workers in, esp. in the case of such a huge wet dirty BEAR like you!" And he got happy because he's called a bear now, of course, just by a sarcastic vulgar not a real word. But, regardless of what the reception meant by BEAR, he started running into the jungle which was besides the highway where motel was located, with all his factory cloths on, while motel reception was shocked and calling the police!... He went into the jungle and finally found a cave by his instinct. Without knowing what to do, however, sat in front of that, started asking himself what he should do. Just knowing that he'd forgotten something, he tried to remember what he should exactly do, but he couldn't remember anything and just asked himself: "What's wrong with me?! What have I forgotten?!"... He waited for few hours while it's snowing, until he got frozen and died in front of the cave...
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Yes! That's the story of "an extreme" with a Kafkaesque view behind it: "A Super Industrialized Nation", which has forgotten all its nature, assuming people should be at work, animals should be in zoo or circus, and cannot imagine anything other than usual daily affairs it's learnt to think of... And of course such society can easily cause a "metamorphism" on you, steals your personality, character, spirit or instinct, convincing you that you're born as what you ARE now: a worker, an engineer, a driver, or what else that can be just a good match for its huge industrialized system... NO IMAGINATION, NO LIFE, NO PERSONAL CHARACTER... And the educational system of such society (I mean our dear planet in general, not a specific country) cannot be too far from this...
Remembering all the above story when I couldn't decide what to do at that afternoon, I started asking myself: "Seriously, what have we forgotten?!..."
P. S. 1. Please do not get misled! I love my field and my adviser. That's for sure! That's why I called him "beloved"... I also love UofM and Ann Arbor. That's also for sure! Don't think that we (I mean all people) are forced by our bosses and advisers in the modern industrial system, and that there's less pressure upon people with higher ranks (At this point I don't agree with that German writer that the head boss had less things to do...). I believe that in such a modern society, all people, regardless of their ranks, are CHAINED equally by the system, but you may not be able to see the chains clearly... (e.g. My adviser almost works as hard as us...)
P. S. 2. Does anyone know the exact German name of that book?! As I mentioned above, it seems that the name "A bear who intended to remain a bear", had just come out of the Farsi translation... I'll appreciate it if anyone lets me know the name...
P. S. 3. Am I getting too Kafkaesque or I'm just tired?!
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P. S. 4. (written on July 5): Thanks to the "Google Translate", I found the book: "Der Bär, der ein Bär bleiben wollte" (I guess it means "The bear who wanted to stay". This English title cannot be, however, found on the web either. Maybe it's not available in English!)... Anyway, you might be interested in checking it out yourself: at amazon.de or at somewhere else! It's also amazing that I'd remembered the author's (there are two!) names almost correctly: "Jörg Müller" and "Jörg Steiner". One more thing that I realized at Wikipedia: They're both Swiss not German...
P. S. 5. (written on July 5): It's not the first time that I'm writing something related to a writer, director or a musician, on his/her birthday (I'd done it previously in my old blog for Liszt, Bresson, Bach, Mosaddegh, etc.) but it's EXACTLY the FIRST time that I did it totally by accident! Totally! Few minutes ago I realized (in Facebook) that Kafka's birthday is on July 3, 1883! It was his 125th birthday when I was thinking and writing about him! Can you believe it?! I'm not superstitious at all, but now totally excited -and at the same time- afraid of such a strange sympathy/telepathy!... What a rare coincidence! :-)
